It's now been over two years since Eternal X 1.1 was finally wrapped up. Before that even happened, I was part way through a texture upgrade project, increasing the resolution of all textures to 1024x1024 and creating proper glow and bump maps for them all, but as usual life kept beating the hell out of me and kept me from continuing any further than getting one set mostly done.

This past year I have managed to tame life enough and figure out a slow enough working pace that I've managed to complete a large writing project, sketching out my enormous Chronicles of Quelouva. Given that General Tacticus late last year stepped up to finally complete the biggest missing piece of calling Eternal "done", creating HD weapons, I've decided to take that momentum from last year's Chronicles work, and dedicate this year to finally crossing Eternal off of my to-do list forever.

There are three sub-items on that to-do list.

Finish the HD texture upgrade.

Replace the Headless and Nightmares with some low-effort (read: invisible) alternatives in theme with the Banshees.*

Implement all the little i-dots and t-crosses (e.g. "this elevator is slow and annoying") from Ryoko's and Crater Creator's extensive reviews.

I intend to focus mostly on the first of those items, crawling along slowly at a pace of about one texture set every two months. I hope to figure out some way of sharing progress on that here along the way.

But I would be delighted if anyone else who is already familiar with the current toolchain (which I've basically not used at all, not having done any Marathon work since losing Classic support on my computer) could please help me with the last two items.

If it's helpful at all for anyone who wants to help with the third item, the little map adjustments, I have a GitHub repo of the Eternal maps merge folder. But you don't have to use that if you don't want to, you can email me files or post them here or whatever suits you best.

Any volunteers?

*My current thoughts on replacement monsters:

Headless replaced with something big (F'lick'ta?), fast, easy to kill, but with a damaging melee attack, that makes a slowed-down version of the Banshee death scream as it moves. So you hear it closing in on you fast, and if you turn around and shoot it quickly enough you're fine, but if it reaches you it hurts.

Nightmares replaced with Wasps that don't chirp, maybe with a slower rate of fire, so you just hear their flapping around and above you and occasionally get hit with a shot.

Generally aiming for a theme of "ghosts", things that are scary and atmospheric, but not horrendously difficult to fight. Maps to be adjusted so that there's not unending hordes of them too, of course. All this is wide open to community suggestion, just so long as we're getting rid of those awful shrieking embarrassments that currently mar the final chapter, and it doesn't take anything more than physics changes to accomplish it.

I dunno much about the technical side of things (so someone else would have to work 'em into the Shapes file for you), but if you want me to, I can try and draw some sprites for the "nasty cloaked thing that hits hard but goes down easily" enemy. If it's perma-cloaked (except when it gets splattered, maybe?) I think all I'd have to worry about is the silhouette. Would have to send you some concept art first for approval.

I also think perma-cloaking (and muting) the Nightmares would take care of the visual disconnect between the PiD guys and the other enemies, and still convey "something that shouldn't exist" without players thinking "oh, it's just a cloaked Wasp".

(Also, if you ever want to replace/add terminal art, I'd be willing to help there too)

Thanks for the offer, but since it'd be cloaked anyway I don't think it's really necessary. My original thought was actually cloaked Devlins (with physics changes), but then I thought, if it's cloaked anyway, no point wasting effort importing them into the shapes file.

That is a good idea about perma-cloaked Nightmares, and would make it easier to make the changes too. I think I'd still want to add the Wasp flapping sound to them (because I think that adds to the atmosphere), and maybe make them smaller and float higher. Not sure if I'd want to cloak their shots too.

I'm not familiar with Eternal at all, but I might have a look if I can give myself a break from M1R. I'd love to see Eternal get an update as Narcogen & Blackstar were talking about doing a series at one point.

BTW I haven't commented on it much, but I like the idea of M1R a lot. I've been sort of wistfully thinking that that's something I'd have liked to have done aeons ago in a better alternate timeline where I was awesome.

I just realized that I haven't actually completed the switched textures yet. I'll try to get those done in the next day or so and update here when they're ready, but meanwhile here's the rest of the special textures.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to roll back the mac os x on a 2011 mbp? This sack of shit has gotten laggy as all fuck since i last tried doing graphics work on it a few years ago and i blame fucking apples goddamn osx updates for it.

Just spent a couple fucking hours mostly waiting on illustrator to open render and save two fucking files.

Will post them here as soon as they finish saving. Posting from ipad because mbp is unusably slow meanwhile.

I may have to say fuck is project if i cant get that fixed cause i spend all fucking day in a gigantic fucking rush trying to push my work comouter to keep up wih me and i am not fucking NOT going to spend hours every motherfucking night waiting on this piece of shit computer just to put the finishing touches on ONE FUCKING TEXTURE

FINALLY her are the worthless shits i ruined my entire fucking night for now. spent the past three and a half fucking hours just adding that 'broken' effect to the 'wires' on the right, most of it waiting for motherfucking shits to open an render and save and close and jesuss fucking fucki'm goign to slowly peel teh flesh off of someone at apple over this

Pfhorrest wrote:Anyone have any suggestions on how to roll back the mac os x on a 2011 mbp? This sack of shit has gotten laggy as all fuck since i last tried doing graphics work on it a few years ago and i blame fucking apples goddamn osx updates for it.

Mac OS X updates include security patches you shouldn't put a machine online without. So, I really don't recommend going farther back than the earliest release that still gets those updates, which is currently El Capitan.

That second one sounds dubious to me because it says "When your Mac hardware gets too old, your speed drops drastically" which should just not be true. Solid state electronics do not fucking wear out and slow down.

But I can't seem to be satisfied with those metal textures (the third subset above). It's the base material underlying them all, I can't seem to find something that looks metallic up close but not weird from a distance. I just tried making some modifications to them: